Guest Post: Reality Has Consequences

The world no longer makes sense to most people over forty years of age. Much of what we thought was true is now denied. What to us is obviously false (or at least always was) is now accepted as being true. Here are examples from Frick at Bias Breakdown that show obvious contradictions between popular belief and what we hold as reality:

If every Arab in the Middle East laid down his weapon, there would be peace in the Middle East. If every Israeli laid down his (or her) weapon, Israel would be annihilated.

Likewise, if government stopped all spending, the deficit problem would be solved. If government confiscated the gross annual income of every individual in the country making over $66,193, the deficit would destroy our country.

In a sane world, politicians would cut every last dollar of government spending they could in order to bring financial order back to an entitlement-happy society. After government’s debilitating spending habits were slashed or restructured, only then would the conversation shift to taxes and revenue to make up the gap.

Of course, this isn’t a sane world. It’s the world in which it’s Israel’s fault for every ill in Palestine and Republicans are evil and stupid for wanting to cut spending.

Fantasies like these might are satisfying to many, but they are ultimately destructive. Truth cannot be changed by repeating falsehoods. Nor can it be altered by more people believing untruths. But, when these fantasizers overwhelm society with their false beliefs, society will no longer function. Society cannot invent its own truth based on convenience, prejudice or popularity. Truth, not manufactured myth, is key to survival. Societies which deviate from it, don’t survive.

As Ayn Rand stated:

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.

The avoidance of reality has overtaken our society. The consequences of doing so have been building for decades and will soon overwhelm us. On our current path, much of what we knew and cared about will be destroyed.

If you are over 50 you remember when people complained about all the negroes on television, your parents attended PTA meetings, no one got a free lunch, and government workers made less money than you did.

I'm well over 50 and never heard anyone complain about Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, Bill Cosby (remember I Spy?) or any other black performer. Today, I wouldn't blame them if they did complain about the pimps, dope peddlers and hoodlums they put on the air but no one seems to care.

I remember free milk if not free lunch, and government employees were widely regarded as bums on the plush.

MSM TV news has about a 400 word vocabulary and has 5 talking points for each topic that they keep repeating over and over again. It's a pretty simple formula and is the reason you become nauseated after five minutes of viewing.

Don't watch this because your version of reality about Israel may change;

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian man and wounded nine along Gaza’s border fence with Israel on Friday, a Gaza health official said, reporting the first violence since a truce between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers took hold a day before.

The shooting appeared to be an isolated incident and was unlikely to jeopardize the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire, which called for an end to Gaza rocket fire on Israel and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. The truce came after eight days of cross-border fighting, the bloodiest battle between Israel and Hamas in four years.

The Gaza prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, has urged militant factions to respect the cease-fire.

Yes but the difference is ZH does not give specific investment advice. You ever hear that ad? They have taken credit for being ahead of every market move over the last decade. If you keep that kind of ad running over and over I guess that's how they claim credit.

An ad on Lew Rockwell leads to a site which sells investment advice and that's a problem but ads on ZeroHedge as well as some of the articles themselves link to sites which sell investment advice and that's OK?

I feel like an idiot for typing this but I didn't down vote you. How are you getting on after the storm? Things back to normal yet?

I thought it was Lew Rockwell that was actually behind the whole thing. If it is just an ad on his site then I take it all back. Shit, I wrote what I wrote out of boredom anyway. That seems to be the case lately. Like cranky old geezer said, while we are probably travelling at light speed towards the wall it seems almost like nothing is going on lately.

I'm good thanks. My area is pretty much back to normal. Areas along the coast are wrecked. It's really crazy. It's literally lights out and game over for a lot of people. I am surprised there is not more news about the battles going on between people, fema and insurance companies.

"I am surprised there is not more news about the battles going on between people, fema and insurance companies. "

I'm not.

The political photo-ops have been had, the pictures beamed out to an anxious world who exhaled a collective sigh of relief that "someone" really cared enough to have their picture snapped with a commoner. The small details of actually living in a metropolitan area after a catastrophe are left to bureaucrats and their red tape, their union bosses extracting their pound of flesh and of course, the victims.

That article you linked to is a pretty poor sales pitch for Cryptohippie, in my opinion.

Anybody who promises super safety with TOR or whatever is just delusional. It should be easy to infiltrate a few nodes. Then you need to track packets: maybe you find a weakness in the code, maybe you can do timing/CRC signature analysis, maybe you can spoof to reverse exclude possible paths. Finally the number of endpoints in the TOR network is relatively limited, control/eavesdrop on those and you know everything.

You should make yourself comfortable with the high likelihood that interested powers can take over every single, even somewhat hardened, computer connected to the internet without intentional user interaction (so I'm not even talking direct social engineering here).

Also have you read and analyzed the source code?How do we know it hasn't happened that some mole introduced some loophole, cleverly disguised as some code improvement, to allow tracking or whatever?Have you heard of the guy who (accidentally?) broke the random generator in Debian, making self-generated SSL certificates and such close to worthless?In the end the weakest point is the obscurity, inevitable by the complexity of the project.

Granted, there are lots waking up, but the largest (vast supermajority) contingent of people in America have no clue what is going on anywhere outside their own isolated brain/house/back yard.

They combine with (AND are the same as) the next population of people who believe they have improved America by electing more of the same republicrats to office -Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, ...Whatever-

and this spells trouble. Really big trouble actually.

Just buckle your seat belts and strap it on cause we are ALL going for a ride.

They are calling it "climate change" because very small brained and ideologically blind people have a tendency to say "ha ha. It's snowing out. Global warming can't be true because it's cold outside my back door." Most people apparently are unable to recognize the word "global" in "global warming."

Scientist who said climate change sceptics had been proved wrong accused of hiding truth by colleague

Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.

Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.

‘This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting,’ Prof Curry said. ‘Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2.’

"Each of the last ten years features in the top 11 warmest years recorded in all datasets." Just a coincidence, and obviously debunked by a single scientist as reflected in your post. All the other thousands of scientists who accidentally guessed correctly that the world would be warmer are wrong (even though they were right). http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/12/climate_change

It takes a brave man to insist that those who admit that they have lied to him in order to pursue a social agenda are actually telling the truth. Well, maybe brave isn't the word. For how many more decades are you going to fall for it?

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both. -- Dr. Stephen Schneider, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Quoted in Discover, pp. 45–48, Oct. 1989.)

"The common enemy of humanity is man.In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All thesedangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only throughchanged attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome.The real enemy then, is humanity itself."- Club of Rome 1993

"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony...climate change provides the greatest opportunity tobring about justice and equality in the world."- Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment, Calgary Herald, December 14, 1998

"The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear cut, but it hasn’t happened.

'The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world.

'[The temperature] has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that."-- James Lovelock, 2012

The linear trend in HadCRUT4 from August 1997 to August 2012 (181 months) is 0.03ºC/decade (blue) (In GISTEMP it is 0.08ºC/decade, not shown).

The trend from August 1975 to July 1997 is 0.16ºC/dec (green), and the trend to August 2012 is 0.17ºC/dec (red).

The ten years to August 2012 were warmer than the previous 10 years by 0.15ºC, which were warmer than the 10 years before that by 0.17ºC, which were warmer than the 10 years before that by 0.17ºC, and which were warmer than the 10 years before that by 0.17ºC (purple).

The continuation of the linear trend from August 1975 to July 1997 (green dashed), would have predicted a temperature anomaly in August 2012 of 0.524ºC. The actual temperature anomaly in August 2012 was 0.525ºC.

The first point might suggest to someone that the tendency of planet to warm as a function of increases in greenhouse gases has been interrupted. The second point might suggest that warming since 1997 has actually accelerated, the third point suggests that trends are quite stable, and the last point is actually quite astonishing, though fortuitous. Since all of these things (and many others) are equally true (in that their derivation from the underlying dataset is simply a mechanical application of standard routines), it is clear that our expectation for the future shouldn’t be simply based on an extrapolation of any one or two of them – the situation is too complex for that.

It really is good for a laugh whenever anyone claims "global warming" is largely attributed to three or four hundredths of a percent of gaseous plant food in our atmosphere with virtually no IR retention dynamics.

It was actually a couple of degrees warmer than it is now when the Norse were farming Greenland as one example but I guess that doesn't count because Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet so word could spread to East Anglia, right?

I know it can be very difficult for some folks to be honest and open, so I'll go first...

I think it's pretty obvious that mankind has the capability to change the basic patterns of life on Earth--we've done it all over the place. I think given that we have already destroyed huge swatches of vegetative cover of the planet, and given that we've been doing everything possible to burn every last drop of oil we can find, and given that the CO2 level in the atmosphere is rising measurably, it's for damn sure possible that burning fossil fuels and continuing to deforest continents is going to impact the global climate in extremely unpredictable ways.

During the 21st century CO2 levels have continued to rise but the temperature has not kept pace as the models had predicted. The models were wrong. As Dr. Curry said in one of those oh-so-inconvienient links, "Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2."

What are your feelings on the AGW proponents who have publicly admitted that they have either purposely mislead the public or have been alarmist in their past confusion over models which they now admit are flawed?

I could go the extra mile and make an inference about your personal beliefs here--I could infer that you are ASSERTING that "changing atmospheric CO2 levels cannot be causing changes to the global climate," but that's not what you said.

Is that what you believe?

(The unwillingness to answer the simplest questions suggests very strongly you're some kind of lobbyist or PR shill. Most people who are having conversations aren't nearly so evasive.)

I am watching the reality adverse crowd grow ever more desperate as global warming caused by CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere traps ever more heat that otherwise would be radiated into space. A simple experiment that an 8th grade science class can run is capable of proving that the higher the CO2 level in the atmosphere, the more radiant heat that is trapped. Taking fossil carbon out of the ground and burning it causes more CO2 to accumulate in the atmosphere. These events are explainable through the laws of physics and atmospheric chemistry. There is no room for doubt as these laws of physics are demonstrable. To deny them is to waste one's time and is clearly being done as part of a propaganda campaign by a worried fossil fuel industry. Their worry is that a major shift to non-carbon burning energy sources will take place over time and their profits will fall.

The fact that every denier on ZH, be he a misguided follower of FOX news or a professional denier on the pay role of the PR firms hired at cost of millions of dollars a year by fossil fuel producers to post lies, is along for the ride does not seem to worry them.

As they strive to deny global warming and strive to further increase the rate of warming, by preventing any action to address increased burning of fossil carbon in the form of coal, oil and gas, they are trapped on the same earth as all of us. Many deniers in NY and New Jersey just had their homes flooded or smashed by an unprecidentedly large storm with a record low pressure and record wind field size. Alomst certainly the path of the storm and it's size are directly related to record warm ocean waters and the blocking high pressure system off of Greenland caused by record ice melt in the arctic this summer. These are surely a direct result of global warming.

The deniers were hammered along with regular folks. The lesson from this is "deniers are not immune, they suffer the results of global warming just like non FOX viewers. They can lie and deny, they can close their minds and accept the liars paid for by oil companies to spread lies, BUT they will not escape the proven forces of global warming. The latest data show beyond doubt that global climate warming and the extreme weather that it drives is now happening decades faster than climate scientists predicted. So YES, the models were wrong, they were far TOO conservative. The arctic and Greenland are already in run away melt down, this was supposed to happen no sooner than 50 years from now. The vast methane plumes rising from the arctic seas off of eastern Siberia are just one sign that the tipping point is here. From now on the global warming will increase at an unprecidented rate.

Every lie and every paid for propaganda piece from the highly paid Public relations firms hired by fossil fuel industries to spread lies to people can not change the facts, the laws of physics, nor the endless tons of new CO2 spread into the atmosphere by the billions of people on earth taking fossil carbon out of the ground and returning it to the atmosphere. Today the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than it has been in 15 million years. This is a fact, deniers must lie because they have no data, no science and no facts to explain away the physics of global warming and the absolute known causes of it.

Deniers may be nice folks, church goers and family people. Good neighbors and honest Americans. But they are going to pay the price, just like all the rest of us. I bet many a global warming denier is right now picking through the ruins of their New Jersey homes or standing in the Mid West looking over their drought destroyed farm crops. The message is clear, denial can't change reality. The weather is going to continue to slam and hammer the deniers, their denial is a meaningless exercise. A waste of their time. But hey, if denial is driven by a belief in their dominion over the earth like the bible tells them, then let them think that way. reality will not spare them, ask any denier who lost his house in New York. How is that denial working for you eh??

Keep up the good work "letThemEatRand" I enjoy the courage of your posts when you know telling the truth will get you slammed by the usual suspects. In many cases "the usual suspects" are professional liars who are paid to troll the internet and faill the comments sections of any blog post related to climate change. They ahve talking points prepared for them by their employeers at the PR firms who work for big oil. They load the comments sections with these talkning points. When the talking points are destroyed by anyone familiar with the physics, data and science of global warming, they are then instructed to call the informed posters all sorst of names like I am sure to be called by these very same folks who will reply to my post".

I can respect a denier that just can't get the facts and science clear in their minds, I do not respect the liars who earn money for being tools of the fossil fuel industry. They lie for money, which seems to be an American trait as of the last decade. Be it the illegal wars, the illegal spying on Americans or the bainless denial of scientific fact, Americans are becoming a people feed a steady diet in lies. Global waming is not a lie, because it is provable through the physics, the math and the measurements. Deniers have nothing to add, because they have no case that can survive scientific scrutiney. It is that clear. If they could prove their case, they would. Since they can not, they then must lie. It is that simple.

Helluva post there, "Jack". I see you've gone the tired old George Carlin route when speaking of those who don't think like you want 'em to: "If you don't think the way I do, then you're just stupid!!" You're even boring, pompous & sanctimonious, just like old George was.

The only difference being of course that Carlin could manage to say it in just a few words, whereas you......not so much. Eat a shit sandwich, Jack. It is that simple.

You just proved every point in my long winded post. You even ended your comment with attacking me with "eat a shit sandwhich, Jack".

Now that does make me reconsider the laws of physics and the proven data that show global warming to be a fact and a fact that is growing more undeniable everyday.

I will not swear at you. If you read my post, I even said I could respect a denier who simply couldn't grasp the data and science behind global warming. It is the professional deniers who deny for pay that I can not respect.

My personal favorite is when they accuse me of ad hominen attacks for challenging the merits of their position, as they call me a fuck face. The fact that they don't see the irony makes it even more pitiful.

I know Rand, it is all so predictable. I offer to listen to any case they can make to debunk the vast body of evidence that has been accumulated by the scientific method, the same method that has produced all the wonders of the modern world, in return, not one of them presents a rational case.

They do tell me to "eat a shit sandwhich". That passes for cleverness in their world. I have said it repeatedly, "if they had a case to make that can stand up to scientific scrutiny, they would make it. The fact that they choose not to even attempt to do so is all the proof one needs."

Let's be clear. If Exxon Mobil, with all their billions in profits, can not find a few climate scientists to pay millions of dollars to to provide the verifiable scientific case to debunk modern global warming evidence they WOULD HAVE DONE IT. The fact that they can not do so should make a person of even the meanest intelligence see that that case is not made because it can not be made.

So obvious. Rather call me a "Twilight Zone idiot" as if that make their case. The anger is obvious, anger instead of reason. This is what America is all about in the 21st century. To modern Americans who worship ideology, there is no reality, there is only ideology.

This reminds one of the old Soviet Union. Where communits ideology was held to trump even scientific reality if it conflicted with the party line. Now AMerican conservatives, of some sorts, have adopted the same sort of thinking. The idea that their ideology trumps science and observable data.

There really are climate science deniers who think the arctic is not melting, that Greenland is not in melt down, that most glacers in the wrold are not meltings, that land based ice in antarctica is not melting, that global temperatures are not rising, that sea levels are not on the rise, the extreme weather events are not driven by a warmer atmosphere and sea temperature.

Despite all the observable evidence, they feel they make their best case by calling me a "fucking idiot". I actually welcome the childish threats and name calling. Anyone who honestly respects man intellect and the scientific method would rather be called a "fucking idiot" than to deny reality and our ability to determine via the scientific method what reality is as far as it is possible to.

I'm an engineer by training. So I deal with reality. When the observed facts don't fit your theory, you change your theory.

Tuvalu isn't underwater, and average temperatures have moderated. Many of the scientists who signed the IPCC report had no formal training in climatology. Some of them have admitted to making up "their data", like the guy from India who falsely said the Himalayan glaciers were melting. Others fudged their data to make a more sensational case, like Mann's hockey stick. One of the main authors of the IPCC report - whose name escapes me at the moment - admitted that he suppressed any reservations and caveats in the report to make the threat appear more imminent and crucial. Not a single prediction made by the IPCC has come to pass. So, on that basis, I and many others dismiss climate change. We are not ignorant or unintelligent; we simply looked at the predictions, and then the facts, and since there was no match between them, we have no faith in the climate scare. You apparently believe that a theory that does not bear any relation to reality is valid.

If that's your idea of the scientific method, I can tell you must have been an arts major. The 100+ petawatts we receive from the giant nuclear explosion 93 million miles away has a far greater impact on climate than any human activity.

Well said. Unfortunately, the AGW crowd does not adhere to the scientific method. That gets in the way of their agenda, which has little to do with climate, and everything to do with control. Thus, their prefered "scientific method" is science by concensus.

Do you even understand what's behind that concept? One of the most important parts is that the model, its design concept including underlying assumptions and the input facts are made freely available, so everyone can go reproduce the model result and reflect on the validity of the assumptions.Everything falling short of that is just a belief system.

One of the most important parts is that the model, its design concept including underlying assumptions and the input facts are made freely available, so everyone can go reproduce the model result and reflect on the validity of the assumptions.

Spot on. One of my criticisms of Mann in particular is that he refused to release his code and his data. He claimed it would take up too much of his time. I write computer code for a living. Even the largest programs only take a few hours to upload. He could have done it an afternoon, placed it on the university server, and be done with it. The fact that he won't divulge his data or his method makes me highly suspicious.

They are calling it "climate change" because very small brained and ideologically blind people have a tendency to say "ha ha. It's snowing out. Global warming can't be true because it's cold outside my back door." Most people apparently are unable to recognize the word "global" in "global warming

Yes, it does. If you have no documentation of the intelligence of those whom you call stupid then that is an ad hominem attack by definition. Do you have such documentation?

1ad ho·mi·nem

adjective\(?)ad-?hä-m?-?nem, -n?m\Definition of AD HOMINEM
1
: appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect
2
: marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made

Nah, the fact that there are stupid people who believe something in itself doesn't imply that there are not also INTELLIGENT people who believe the same thing, and as a result, it doesn't serve to attack or invalidate an argument at all.

Who would have thought that the creator of the Gaia theory would become a denier in your opinion? Or might you admit that your eighth grade science experimants weren't quite as sophisticated as you thought they were at the time?

Dr. Lames Lovelock: 'The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing,' he told 'We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear cut, but it hasn’t happened.

'The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world.

'[The temperature] has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.'

"In many cases "the usual suspects" are professional liars who are paid to troll the internet and faill the comments sections of any blog post related to climate change. They have talking points prepared for them by their employeers at the PR firms who work for big oil."

Haole, I've seen some real idiots around here before, but this Jack Burton clown is in the fucking Twilight Zone. LOL.

Geee Bay of Pigs, I've been reading your posts for many years, especially when we were all part of Mish's comments section. I never pegged you for a person who would rather name call than make your case against the science and data that prove global warming. If there is a real case to be made, why not make it? I never considered you a "real idiot" or a "fucking clown." I found many of your posts interesting.

Perhaps you could clear up for me where the facts are wrong in the body of scienctific data that support Co2 accumulation and it's properties of trapping the radiant heat that otherwise would escape to space?

I offered everyone a chance to debunk this body of data and science when I made my original post. Why does nobody do that?

I consider the insults to be childish. Do you maintain that the fossil fuel companies have not hired large PR firms to manage a campaign of tracking internet stories on global warming and hiring a body of employees to post a series of carefully crafted posts to try and divert discussion away from the data and science.

I have read some interesting analysis of the denier movement and those who ascribe to it. The ability to discount facts and data no matter how undeniable and demonstable is interesting.

Since you think a person who accepts the measurable data and observable results of a warming global temperature to be a Quote "Clown in the fucking Twilight Zone", I wonder is that a gut reaction or do you think, based on my posts of many years on many subjects, that I really am, the "real idiot" you claim me to be?

I have taken knocks a lot harder than name calling on the internet. So I am afraid my feelings are intact. Did that name calling make any impact on the rising temperatures, the melting glaciers or increasing extreme weather events? A stock holder in the Insurance Companies could tell you that that branch of private enterprise is very much "in the loop" as regards rising sea levels, rising frequency of extreme weather events, growing power of hurricanes and tornado activity. They have their business model based on analysis of their risks. I guarantee you, that all major insurnce carriers are doing their business models based on global warming as real and getting worse. They are not going to bankrupt their companies and wreck their stockholders by refusing to acknowledge and make their business plan based on global warming as a reality. That is why they are bailing out of coverage in areas their climatologists deem to be at highest risk of the global warming induced extreme weather. Now the government is having to provide the coverage smart business men know is a bad risk based on the fact of global warming.

Actually, "Jack", having read more of your oddly mechanical and perfectly spelled & punctuated "thoughts", I'd have to guess you're not even a real person. I think you're a mere persona bot: just a sad little program ginned up by the thousands and employed by those who wish to advance their (invariably statist) agendas by simply outshouting/overwhelming the other side's commonsense arguments via sheer numbers on the web & social media sites. I think you're just the leading edge of a bot swarm, "Jack". I fully expect you & your fellow bots to just start chanting easy-to-remember slogans any second now. ("It's too fuckin' hot! But I'm not a bot!!") I'm frankly surprised you haven't done it already. Who knows? The programming gets more sophisticated every day, no? The real question, of course, is who's paying for you and your fellow 'comment programs'? The banks? The DNC? Another playa? Cui the hell bono?? *DO* enlighten us - if it's within your programmed parameters - won't you, old sport?

That is clearly a comment that makes a lot of sense. I can respect the obvious fact that your scientific analysis has made a fool out of me. I must retract all the foolish data and observations that science has produced as regards global warming. You have provided the real science that has cracked my across the face and made me realize that I am wrong. All these scientists are liars, their data is a lie, the extreme weather is a lie. Everything is normal. Fossil fuel burning can not produce CO2, and even if ti did, you have shown me that the CO2 can't trap heat, and even if it did trap heat, that heat is good for us.

Thanks for showing me real science. And people wonder why the USA is becoming a world wide joke. If it wasn't for our ability to kill people in vast numbers, we would be just another worn out nation headed for it's own particular "dark age".

How many people are you willing to let die from poverty caused by unaffordable energy???? It's time for the climate terrorists to admit that there are no viable alternative sources of energy. Until there are, fossil fuels are MANDATORY for there to be adequate economic activity to feed, clothe, and house the global population. The abject lunacy that $$$$$billions given to the U.N. will save the planet from destruction makes it impossible to take the "Al Gores" seriously. If the climate obsessives came up with rational solutions that weren't inherently corrupt and ineffective, progress towards a cleaner environment would be possible. May I suggest that keeping the nitrate runoff from corn ethanol production out of the Gulf of Mexico might be a fabulous way to kick off a save the planet project??????? The damage being done from idiotic non-"solutions" is incalculable.

So where's my Global Warming? I live in Canada and it cost me $3000 to heat my house last year and oil is even higher this year. I have been waiting for this much advertised Global Warming for 20 years, where is it? OK I admit we had a few mild winters in the 1990s but that turned out to be a fizzle.

I WANT MY GLOBAL WARMING!!!

Also, where's my damn check? I've been crabbing about Global Warming for years and never got my check from the oil companies. Where is it?

How many AGWers support nuclear power as a way to lower CO2 emissions? None?

Their "solution" is more taxes and another market for Wall Street to make money on (carbon credits)?

Sorry, but long as their solution is another govt and Wall Street windfall, I'm not buyin' it.

How 'bout no more taxes, no "carbon credits", nothing Wall Street can make money on, require all new electricity generating facilities be nuclear (thorium, not unranium), stop giving Wall Street banks huge cash gifts, use that money to subsidize (like 70%) people trading in old low mileage vehicles for new high mileage vehicles.

Help people and industry pay the cost of more efficient fossil fuel use instead of helping govt and wall street make money off it, and I might support CO2 reduction.

No one is 100% free so it is bad to seek liberty. No one can avoid all illness so it is bad to maintain good health. No one can see the future therefore it is bad to plan for tomorrow. No one can paint a perfect picture or write a perfect book or sing a perfect song so we should all just sit here with our heads in the dirt. And you don't think that's childish?

Here's a heads up, there will ALWAYS be someone telling you what to do.

Actually no. Most govt control is saying what you can't do, outlawing more and more natural human action till everybody is a lawbreaker, even 10 yr olds with a lemonade stand and someone's back yard garden, both illegal now or soon will be.

There's less and less you can do now without govt fees and licenses and regulations and govt goons looking over your shoulder. Many normal non-hazardous occupations are outlawed now unless you pay a fee get a license jump thru myriad govt hoops and tolerate 50 govt agencies looking over your shoulder.

The original American model prohibited this sort of govt control over people. But the founders did it the wrong way. They went the nebulous "rights" route, not the clear "govt is prohibited" route. It was the biggest mistake the founders made.

Rand was about as human as Joseph Stalin. Best place for her is in the grave where her sick ideology can rest in peace. Her followers are sicker. She at least was an original thinker. WHo could read her trash and think they have discovered something of value? The human race is best served by her rotting in her grave. I suppose the tax payer probably paid her a funeral benefit too, since the old witch was sucking off the government in her old age. Why didn't the old bitch get out into her free market and earn an honest living when she was old? Taking social security and medicare when she was god's gift to the free market? It makes no sense, the market place would place great value on the dried up old witch, why would she take government benefits when she felt nobody should feed off the government.

If everyone wanted to join the Social Security system voluntarily there would be no need for the government to force you, I or Ayn Rand to participate. It makes little sense to suggest that those who have been forced to pay into a system against their will should forgo restitution for that involuntary taking. They are not the hypocrites. The hypocrites are those who want individuals to be forced to pay into a system and then claim that because those individuals didn't want to pay in the first place they have no right to receive recompense. What joy do you find in bleeding people dry and then condemning them for what you've forced on them?

Capitalism, at it's core, is a corruption breeder. It is the ultimate expression of the Randian ethic: Winner take all, the highest earner is the maker of the rules. Once the Monopoly game starts and wealth concentration begins, you can get a $1000 on GO and still not make it around the board.

This is where we are now. People who will never call the shots fighting for the rights of those who do in the name of a long dead idea. Our choices are public corruption or private corruption. The Free Market is as bad as the government in that neither has a stake in the individual.

We are living in Ayn Rand's world. Corporations control everything. Including the government. Why do you think so much effort is spent fixating on it? The invisible hand is coming out of Wall Street's sleeve.

The only way to succeed in a capitalist system is to fulfill the needs of your customers. This is an improvement over the law of the jungle in which attacking one's fellow man is the way to success.

The Free Market is as bad as the government in that neither has a stake in the individual.

You appear to not understand what a free market involves. When individuals have the freedom to make decisions about their own lives without interference you have a free market. A free market is synonymous with individual decision making.

We are living in Ayn Rand's world. Corporations control everything. Including the government.

We are living in the world which Rand predicted in which government and crony capitalists have taken away initiative from productive individuals of all classes. She was opposed to such a world. That's what Atlas Shrugged is about.

That's fine for you. It's good to confirm that Social Security isn't needed by everybody and therefore it's absurd to force everyone to participate. I'll certainly take any restitution which the thieves are willing to hand back despite the fact that it will fall far short of what was taken from me.

WASHINGTON (AP) — People retiring today are part of the first generation of workers who have paid more in Social Security taxes during their careers than they will receive in benefits after they retire. It's a historic shift that will only get worse for future retirees, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

Time to get your hearing aid checked, old timer, I wasn't talking to you. But thanks for being one more confirmation that Social Security is not necessary and therefore should not be forced on everyone whether they want to participate or not.

This article is about reality. Ok, this is reality, SS is something you apply for, it's not mandatory, there's no law saying you have to apply for SS, there's lots of Americans who never applied for SS, don't have a SS number, FICA is NOT taken out of their paycheck, they get NO benefits either.

Self-employment tax is a tax consisting of Social Security and Medicare taxes primarily for individuals who work for themselves. It is similar to the Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld from the pay of most wage earners.

Self-Employment Tax Rate

The 2010 Tax Relief Act reduced the self-employment tax by 2% for self-employment income earned in calendar year 2011. The self-employment tax rate for self-employment income earned in calendar year 2011 is 13.3% (10.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare).

Who Must Pay Self-Employment Tax?

You must pay self-employment tax and file Schedule SE (Form 1040) if either of the following applies.

Your net earnings from self-employment (excluding church employee income) were $400 or more.

What's interesting now is how many people actually express their belief that we're in waaaaaaay over our heads and that things are unsustainably held together with duct tape, glue and chewing gum-- even if they don't understand the precise mechanics or artithmetic as to the why.

The number of people who actually realize that everything is completely and irreversibly FUBAR as a % of the population, even if not the majority (or purality, for that matter), is the highest it has ever been in my lifetime.

I've never been witness to so many people who are both comfortably AND uncomfortably numb.

In order for a PsyOp to be used as an art of Warfare upon a population/society it has to cross generations. It also infiltrates on all levels of systems. Political, Economic, Religious and most importantly the Educational Indoctrintion school systems. The Globalist have agent "Smiths" in all Matrixes.

The following interview conducted by G. Edward Griffin is chilling yet reviting.

Please don't be too hard on Supernova, Mr. Pink. I turned 50 last month and consider myself Gen X no matter what the demographers say. I sometimes get a little defensive about being lumped in with those asshats myself.

Clearly some of the more complex topics are beyond a large % of the population. However, the rapidly growing debt levels shouldnt be and is a simple example of that reality this article is referring to.